As we prepare to welcome fall and get back into a routine, you’re probably trying to organize your house post summer-chaos. As organized as we try to be, there is always that one awkward cabinet or item that try as you may, will always be messy and problematic. Great news! The problem isn’t you or your stuff; it’s the cabinet. Awkward cabinet spaces come in many forms, but so do the solutions. We’ll explore a few of these awkward spaces and items, and share some simple, easy to ways to enact them–no remodeling or overhauling here!
The Corner Cabinet- 
in each other or the small cutting board you’re looking for gets stuck between a heavy pizza stone and a wood cutting board. Everything in the cabinet needs to come out just to reach one item. Install one or two cabinet dividers to keep your plastic cutting boards, wood cutting boards, baking sheets, and pizza stones separate from one another. These free standing bakeware holders have small ramps that keep round items from rolling and two side stabilizing bars to keep the largest to smallest items from falling over.
Slide Out Chrome Oraganizers make storing and reaching your kitchen appliances convenient. Finally, the big, giant, one eyed, ugly monster of the kitchen storage war! You guessed it, plastic storage containers. In lieu of keeping the lids on each container and taking up more space than most of us have in our entire kitchen, try this double sided 2 tier sliding organizer. Keep short containers under the top shelf, larger ones on the opposite side, and file lids on the top. Have a lot of storage containers? Try this two tiered version of the sliding appliance rack. Dedicate the top shelf to lids and stack containers by size on the bottom. The best tip for food storage containers? Don’t hoard them! Only keep what you truly use and toss the rest.
It doesn’t take long to get your cabinets working for you. The best news is that there is a solution for every problem; you just have to look or think outside of the box for your specific space.
We’d love to know what some of your best awkward cabinet or storage solution secrets are! Leave your tips in the comments below.
How long does it take to organize a garage? One day. No kidding.
If you are dreading this rite of summer, stop fretting. All you need is a plan. Whether it has one, two, or three bays, one day is all a garage deserves. Get in, get organized, and get on with your life. Here’s how.
1. Make your plan. Before moving anything, decide or discuss with your family what you need your garage to do for you. Is parking the car in garage the goal? Must you store trash bins, sports gear, or an extra freezer? Do you have the right type and amount of storage and shelving? Can you store pool gear and seasonal furniture? If your house lacks a mudroom, would your life be easier if there were lockers and a drop off point before entering the house? Is there a high ceiling where you can add a loft for storage? As much as possible, purchase containers and organizing gear in advance so you’ll have them on hand during the job. If you follow my advice regularly, you might be surprised to hear me recommend that. Unlike other organizing projects, however, it pays to have all of your items on hand before you start so you can finish a garage project in just one day. Be sure to schedule a trash container or charity pickup if you might need one.
2. Meet up with the family. I almost always have staff and multiple family members involved in a garage project. The larger or more cluttered the space, the more people I try to have on a job. Recruit a professional and as many family members as you can.
3. Methodically work around the space. Start in one corner of the garage, sort by moving one item at a time out into the driveway or yard, creating piles or stacks of similar items. Label each pile so everyone knows what it is. I recently organized a typical two-car suburban garage, and at the midway point some Jehovah’s Witnesses came up the driveway and remarked on our apparent garage sale. Although it may seem like a lot of work to move everything out only to move it back in, it must be done. Only when the garage was clear could we re-position the wall hooks, fix shelving that needed repair, and move large items to better spots. By the way, this is the hardest step for my clients. They tend to get sidetracked with errands, phone calls, wanting to clean the garage before it is empty, and discussions about where things need to be stored inside the house. All of these activities will sabotage your one-day plan. When empty, assess your garage for the next step.
4. Move back in using zones. Typically children’s toys and bikes should be located on the side with the least traffic or closest to the yard. Extra appliances and food items should be stored close to the house entry. Items that are almost never used can be stored in a loft or in the space above the garage doors (if you don’t decide to donate them). Set off each zone with color, signage, chalk boards, or labeled storage bins or shelves. You might have categories like cleaning chemicals, paint, car maintenance gear, tools, sports gear, trash bins, brooms and mops, and gardening supplies.
5. Make mine a mojito. Tidy up by sweeping the floor and shaking out or replacing the mat that leads into the house. Label shelving with a label maker, masking tape and permanent marker, or hang tags from an office supply store, which work great on wire shelving. Haul the trash to the curb. Tarp the pile for donation. Pull the car back in the garage. And pour yourself a drink in celebration.
How long did your last garage organizing project take?
Now that you’ve seen this plan, do you think you can tackle yours in one day?
We’d love to know.
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Darla DeMorrow is an award winning Certified Professional Organizer®, Color With No Regrets consultant, decorator, author, speaker, and owner of HeartWork Organizing. She helps her clients to reclaim control and add beauty in their lives, their homes, and their workplaces. Request your free 31 Simple Tips for Organizing Space, Time and Paper & Information at www.HeartWorkOrg.com. Her new book for new moms, www.PregnantEntrepreneur.com, is available in hardcopy and e-book.
© 2011 HeartWork Organizing
If you have money and time to spare, please skip this article. Saving money is fashionable again. After you cut out your coffee-house latte, consolidate trips to save gas, and switch your cellular phone plan, what’s left? How about getting organized as a way to fatten your wallet? Can a few changes in your household habits really make a difference?
You probably sense that being organized is better than being disorganized, but there are real, quantifiable payoffs. There are things anyone can do on their own. However, even if you have to get some extra help from a professional organizer to change your habits, the financial benefits can often outweigh the costs. The technical term for this is return on investment, but you can call it more money in your pocket.
Take the woman who organized her work wardrobe recently. She saves money because her clothes are now kept inside the closet, not outside where the dog hair is, and she sends out her dry cleaning less often. At an estimated $5 per garment, she could easily save $20-$100 per month just in dry cleaning bills. She also saves money on buying fewer of the same item over and over because she can’t find the one she needs. Many people buy a replacement garment four or more times a year because that favorite black sweater was lost or forgotten at the back of the closet (at $40 to $100 each). She will earn a hefty tax deduction for ten bags of clothes she donated to charity. Use a value guide to assign value to your donated items, and you could take a tax deduction of between $90 and $450 for just thirty donated blouses. 
Tally all of your donations up, properly document them for tax season (which takes about three minutes), and you can easily end up with cash back from your taxes of $25 to $126 for the above example. Less easy to calculate, but perhaps more valuable, is the time she saves each morning as she doesn’t struggle with her wardrobe. If she can make $50 an hour at her business, an extra 15 minutes per day that she saves from getting dressed and redressed adds up to $275 per month that she could have been earning instead. Maybe this isn’t real money, but maybe she truly can get more done with a couple of hours each month, or maybe she can just arrive at work less hassled. Just by reorganizing her closet, this gal could be saving a conservative estimate of $325-$1,850 per year, and she could be earning as much as an additional $3,300 in her found time.
OK, you’re convinced. How can you turn your disorganization in to real cash? A single mom earned over $300 at a garage sale this summer, which not only left her with reduced clutter and cash in pocket, but she also didn’t move unwanted items when she moved to another house just six months later. She moved herself, so all she paid for was her time, gas, and moving supplies. Have you priced moving boxes lately? Just by reducing the amount of boxes and packing tape she would have had to buy, she saved herself at least $40. Those who pay for a professional mover could save thousands, since moving charges are based on pounds or number of boxes moved. The less clutter and unwanted items you pack and move, the less expensive any move will be.
Are you one of the many people who file their federal taxes using an extension? About 5.5 million extension requests were filed compared to 115 million tax filings in 2009. That is just shy of 5%. There are often fees and missed opportunities with late or extended filings. While the extension Form 4868 can be filed for free directly with the IRS, tax software and CPA fees for the same filing start at $20 and go up. CPAs who file extensions often charge disorganized clients fees just to organize their records. Did you know that actual tax charges must be paid by April 15, even with an extension request, or penalties of 5% per month and more start to accrue. The minimum penalty is $100, but it can turn out to be much more. Even worse, if the IRS actually owes you a refund, they are holding your money until you file your refund request up to six months after the filing deadline, but they won’t pay you interest!
Who doesn’t love a massage? It sounds heavenly just now. Sadly, there are more gift cards and gift certificates lost in junk drawers and paper piles than you can imagine. Just last month a busy professional stumbled upon an old unused bank-issued gift card for $100. The card had expired and the issuing bank had been purchased by another bank before the card owner could track down the value. Several phone calls later, the new bank has offered to look into replacing the card, after a six to eight week period. There are still no guarantees that part or all of the money will show up, but there’s hope.
More on the cost of disorganized paper. Harris Interactive did a survey that found 23% of adults sometimes pay their bills late because they can’t find them. Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ll notice that banks and credit companies are increasing and assessing more fees since the mortgage meltdown and resulting legislation over recent years. While these fees used to be nominal and annoying, an overdraft fee can now be $40 or more. Just think, you might bounce a couple of checks before you realize you are overdrawn, and your bank can easily eat up $120 or more of money you don’t have before you find out about it. Yowzer! You’re really going to need a massage after getting that bank statement.
You’ve heard that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Some people get so disorganized that not only does prevention get ignored, so does the cure. Home improvement projects, for instance, should happen before small fixes cause big repair bills. 
One woman was afraid to have a roofer come in to fix a leak in her bedroom ceiling because of the clutter in her bedroom. After organizing the clothes and clutter in her bedroom, she got the leak fixed. Had she let it go any longer, she would have been faced with a much larger repair bill. A typical handyman can handle a small repair for about $50. A roofing repair with interior drywall, paint, and trim replacement from water damage can be well in to the thousands. There are many, many ten thousand dollar bathroom renovations that could have been prevented with a $5 tube of caulk or a $100 plumber’s visit.
Successfully organizing one part of your life can lead to improvements in another. A busy professional reorganized her kitchen cabinets, and she now has space to put away groceries so she can actually see what she has. 
She threw out at least $300 in packaged food that expired in 2005. She also tackled her unruly plastic storage, where she had not one, but two sets of tubs specifically for carrying a healthy lunch in to work (never used). Lunch out usually costs between $5 and $10 these days, but you can buy $10 of sandwich fixings, fruit and yogurt to supply you with lunch for the entire week. Savings: $160 per month. She has a better chance now of eating dinner at home, saving money from not purchasing expensive and unhealthy drive-thru meals; dinners out are another $160-$320 per month in potential savings. Finally, by reformatting her pantry, she has a better chance of reformatting her fitness goals, by eating more fresh food and less fatty and preservative-laden food. And that, as they say, is priceless.
If you saw $100 laying on the street, would you stop to pick it up? These real-life stories offer easy ways to quickly pick up real money. Hopefully you’ll find inspiration and tangible value in tackling just one organizing project that you’ve been thinking about. Take part of those savings and splurge on a fun organizing tool, or better yet, a clutter-free massage.
*Get Organized recognizes that Darla DeMorrow is an award winning service provider. Darla DeMorrow is a Certified Professional Organizer®, Color With No Regrets consultant, decorator, author, speaker, and owner of HeartWork Organizing. She helps her clients to reclaim control and add beauty in their lives, their homes, and their workplaces. Request your free 31 Simple Tips for Organizing Space, Time and Paper & Information at www.HeartWorkOrg.com. Her new book, The Pregnant Entrepreneur, will be available in April 2011.
© 2011 HeartWork Organizing